Saturday, March 30, 2013

Papa Francesco is so deeply committed to somehow reaching out and reversing the catastrophe which has devastated the vineyard since the Council.

There is to be no obstacle from "the past" allowed to stand in the way; surely, if we simply demolish more of the "timeworn" traditions of the Faith, if we simply get rid of every thing that might offend those who are, of course, offended- by what? By the Catholic Church, Her Dogmas, Her Liturgies!- then perhaps we can overcome this disaster.

Perhaps if we simply continue razing the bastions, things will turn around.

At Holy Thursday Mass I was blessed by God to assist at the Mandatum, where twelve men had their feet washed by our beloved priest, as has been done always and everywhere, since Our Lord Himself did so first, on the night before He was crucified, on the night when He gave us the Holy Eucharist.

Poor Peter, completely in the dark...........

"Jesus answered, and said to him: What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter."

Find a Traditional Mass, a good and holy Traditional priest, and get ready.

Unfortunately, “overwhelming consilience” is the quite predictable outcome of *any* research program dedicated to the preservation of, rather than the experimental test with the intention to potentially falsify, a given model.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Copernican Principle (which is the irreducible, foundational assumption of modern cosmology) has been observationally falsified.

The universe's largest visible structure is aligned in completely inexplicable ways with supposedly insignificant Earth.

This is now established, scientific, observational fact.

"The Principle" is now the one movie that you really must see this year, since it is only every few centuries or so that the foundational assumption governing our entire worldview comes crashing down.

The ESA press release includes (suitably buried under paragraphs of reassurances that almost everything fits)..........

“The fact that Planck has made such a significant detection of these anomalies erases any doubts about their reality; it can no longer be said that they are artefacts of the measurements. They are real and we have to look for a credible explanation,” says Paolo Natoli of the University of Ferrara, Italy.

“Imagine investigating the foundations of a house and finding that parts of them are weak. You might not know whether the weaknesses will eventually topple the house, but you’d probably start looking for ways to reinforce it pretty quickly all the same,” adds François Bouchet of the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris.

There are 7 distinct anomalies reported in addition to the mutual alignment of quadrupole and octupole:

"the low variance (Sect. 5.2), hemispherical asymmetry (Sect. 5.3), phase correlations (Sect. 5.4), dipolar power modulation (Sect. 5.5), generalized power modulation (Sect. 5.6), parity asymmetry (Sect. 5.7) and the Cold Spot (Sect. 5.8). Each of these anomalies may represent different violations of the fundamental properties of isotropy and/or Gaussianity of the CMB data which are assumed in the estimation of the CMB power".

There is a distinct angular power asymmetry between the north and south hemispheres, with a "remarkable" lack of power in the direction of the north ecliptic pole:

the observed properties of the Planck data are consistent with a remarkable lack of power in a direction towards the north ecliptic pole, consistent with the simpler one-point statistics presented in Sect. 5.2."
There is "a highly significant detection of both non-Gaussianities and anisotropies":"We detect pronounced signatures for both non- Gaussianities and anisotropies........a highly significant detection of both non-Gaussianities and anisotropies in the Planck data, consistent with those obtained previously with WMAP data .......the asymmetry was found to be highly significant for the whole range l=2−600."

There is an odd parity preference in the data, which indicates the low quadrupole power is not an isolated anomaly:

"Therefore, the odd parity preference cannot simply be attributed to the low quadrupole power. It is plausible the low quadrupole power is not an isolated anomaly, but that it shares an origin with the odd parity preference"

There is evidence of anisotropy on large angular scales "which could have profound implications for cosmology":

"In particular, there is evidence for a violation of statistical isotropy at least on large angular scales in the context of the Planck fiducial sky model........In addition, there is evidence from such fits that the low-l spectrum of the Planck data departs from the fiducial spectrum in both amplitude and slope. These results could have profound implications for cosmology. "

The CMB is "manifestly non-Gaussian and anisotropic", but the anomalies are not related to galactic foregrounds or contamination:

"The microwave sky is manifestly non-Gaussian and anisotropic, with known contributions from Galactic astrophys- ical foregrounds, lensing of CMB anistropies by the intervening matter distribution, and the ISW. However, the excellent per- formances of the component separation algorithms used here in rejecting diffuse foregrounds argues strongly against known Galactic emission as the source of the anomalies."

Sunday, March 3, 2013

In Mary's Bones Parts 1, II, III, and IV, we have followed the amazing story of dinosaur bones, purportedly 60-80,000,000 years old (based on the radiometric dating of the strata in which the bones were found), which present the extreme anomaly of soft tissues, hemes, and collagen.

Over at the Talk Rational blog, an extensive debate was engaged on just what the scientific method requires, when Red Dots such as these present themselves to our attention, as precious opportunities to experimentally test (and potentially falsify) that which we think we know.

After several hundred posts where, we were assured, such dino bone anomalies:

1. Don't exist,
2. Even if they do, constitute no challenge to the theory of evolution,
3. Cannot be carbon dated since they are too old,
4. Can be carbon dated to detect modern contamination,
5. Cannot be carbon dated since they will all be contaminated,
6. Can be prepared so as to remove modern contaminants,
7. Cannot be prepared so as to remove modern contaminants............

We finally, at the tail end of the thread, are presented with, at long last, an indication that not all evolutionary scientists have completely departed the realm of science after all.

In this post we are linked to a study which dates- by C14 test- dinosaur bones from Cretaceous (supposedly 65-80 mya) strata.

The bones C14 date to approximately 24,000 carbon years, consistent with dozens of similar C14 tests on other Cretaceous dino bones throughout the world.

On the one hand we can congratulate the team for dating the bones.

On the other we must now ask our Darwinist friends to explain to us how bones that date to 24,000 carbon years got inside rocks that date to 65-80,000,000 radiometric years.